The History & Psychology of a Family

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Non-Fiction

The History & Psychology of a Family
Non-Fiction by Mary Snowman

Chapter 3

Researching and Uncovering Past Generations

When someone decides to look back through their genealogy, there is usually a reason for their search. Perhaps they want to recline under the shade of their family tree and discover the names and dates that make up its growth rings. Maybe their interests lie in the desire to climb the tree and explore the limbs that link them to the past, or listen to the wind rushing through the tree’s branches carrying the sound of the swaying tree as it relinquishes its past through stories and memories. Whatever draws them to search, they will undoubtedly discover information that they did not know existed.

In examining my lineage, I have found my desire to know more about my family aroused. The historical information that surrounds their immigration to Canada and their later migration to the United States leaves me with the desire to leave no stone unturned in my search to put the pieces of the past in place. Chapter 3 is an attempt to record what I have learned, stumbled across, or surmised from my research and oral histories. It is the story of many generations. It is embellished by facts and dates that trace my ancestry back to France along with the oral history of growing up as first generation Americans through much of the twentieth century.

Where do you begin when you start to search for your past? There are many places that are available to you, but the easiest starting point is your family. Facts and names, memories and sorrows are stored within your family structure waiting to be retrieved and retold. This is where I began. My mother had a list of names and dates associated with her grandparents and my father’s family. My goal, at the beginning of the semester, was to track these four family names back to Canada. My mother’s maiden name was Gregoire and her mother’s maiden name Hachey or Hachez. She wasn’t sure about the spelling. My father’s last name was Arsenault and his mother’s maiden name Marier. In her information, my mother had included a paper with the Arsenault lineage traced back to the first emigrant, Pierre Arsenault. His marriage to Marguerite Dugast in Port Royal Acadia, in about 1675 was the starting point of this paper. His parents were listed as unknown, but his origin from France was noted as Saintonge. The family papers also had information on my mother’s grandmother whose maiden name was Laberge. It stated that the first Laberge had arrived in Canada in 1663.

I began to read sources for the beginning genealogist. I intended to do some oral histories with my paternal aunts and uncles in order to gain information on their upbringing and the circumstances of their parents’ childhood and immigration to the United States. I started with Edward Ives’ (1995) book The Tape Recorded Interview and followed with How To Trace Your Family Tree by the American Genealogical Research Institute Staff (1973) and Sharon DeBartolo Carmack’s (1998) Discovering Your Female Ancestors. All of these sources gave me a list of options that I could use in my research. They included agencies of the federal government and the states, genealogy societies, and church records that might provide me with documents or assistance in my research. I was ready to begin my field work. I was certain that I would discover some information, but I did not believe I would uncover much more than I already knew.

My first oral interview was held at my paternal uncle’s house on July 4, 1998. It was the day of our family reunion on the Arsenault/Marier side of my family. I interviewed one of my two uncles and one of my five aunts. The interview with my uncle went fine. He was willing to talk and reminisce. My aunt’s interview was less informational. She focused on only a few topics, and I could not seem to get her past them. I walked away with the impression that she was having a bad day. I was able to glean information about her years as a child and teenager but not about those with whom she had interacted. In asking her to remember, I had caused an emotional upheaval within her. She would not be the only one to shed tears. In fact, most of the women I interviewed would, at some point, stop to compose themselves.

As I listened to the tape of the these interviews, I was less than pleased. There were many people there that day, and my tape recorder had picked up most of the noise associated with a large crowd. It was hard to hear my uncle. His interview was also interrupted by curious relations who wanted to hear what he had to say. This would not have been a problem if they were just willing to listen, but they often interacted with him and drew him away from his thoughts. I, too, had done the same. I found that in speaking with him, I would have a question and interrupt him to ask it. It drew him away from his reminiscing, and I felt I would have received more information if I had just listened.

My aunt was hesitant to be tape-recorded. She did not trust that her information would remain in my possession. I was surprised by her reaction because she video tapes every family occasion. I thought that she would be more understanding. She would not be alone in her hesitation to have the tape-recorder present. I would explain my reasons for the recorder at almost every interview. Her voice came through loud and clear. Instead of people interrupting us, she attempted to draw people into the discussion. As I listened to her interview on the tape, I found myself laughing at her attempts to nail down the years in which certain things that affected the family had happened. She would ask one of her brothers or sisters to verify her information. If they didn’t agree, an altercation would ensue to determine who was right. This noisy, stubborn bantering brought me back to my grandparent’s kitchen table in fond remembrance of similar conversations where one would attempt to talk louder than another in order for their opinion to be heard. Soft-spokenness was not included in the gene structure of this half of my family!

In reflecting on these interviews, I discovered that I needed to make appointments with each of the aunts and uncles I wanted to interview at a time when we could be alone without interruptions, stop myself from interrupting unless the interviewee was faltering, and attempt to help those I was interviewing understand that the tape recorder was necessary for accuracy. Without the recorder, I could not possibly remember all of what was said in the one or two hours of conversation. I, also, needed to transcribe the contents of the tapes. This would be my least favorite task but one that would help me discover my role as the listener and any further topics or information that I wanted from the next interviewee.

The remaining three interviews were relatively uneventful. Several times, my interviewee would ask that I turn off the tape-recorder, and I would oblige. None of the information that they did not want recorded seemed offensive or surprising, but they obviously did not want others to hear it. One of my aunts gave me some detailed written information about family members. She had omitted marriage dates where the bride was expecting and divorce dates from her lists. We discussed the importance of accuracy, and she was willing to let me put in the dates, but she seemed to think that some might be embarrassed to have this information discovered. I left our interview with the feeling that she had carried this protective nature over into her interview and had only given me details that placed her family in a good light. In all fairness though, I also felt that she was a strong personality who had placed her past in an optimistic perspective. She seemed to be able to roll more easily with the punches than some of her other siblings.

At the same time I was conducting interviews, I was also researching. I started at the Coos County Courthouse in Lancaster, NH. Since this is the town I live in, I found this very convenient. I went to the probate office. I was hoping to be able to search through the records myself, but this was not an option. The records I was most interested in were those having to do with my mother’s grandparents. My mother did not know them and had very little information about them. The information she did have was vague. Her grandfather’s last name was spelled Hachey on the information that she had, but she had also seen it spelled Hachez. She did not know her grandmother’s maiden name and had not discovered either of these grandparent’s first names until about 10 years ago.

I want to stop here and give you a brief history of my mother’s family in order for you to understand the reasons for so little information about this side of my heritage. My mother was the third child of Adelard Gregoire and Emelda or Imelda (Hache) Gregoire. They had eight children in all. The youngest one, Leo, died at the age of 3 months. In 1938, my grandmother died of spinal meningitis. My mother was ten years old. Her siblings ranged in age from 13 to 5 years of age. In 1940, my grandfather died of a massive heart attack leaving his seven children orphans. The six youngest were sent to an orphanage, while the eldest stayed with her paternal grandmother, Aurelie Laberge Gregoire. Their grandmother had heard wonderful thinks about the orphanage, but took the children into her home several months later because of accusations of abuse. She was 64 years old and a widow at this time. There was little contact between my mother and the maternal side of her family after her mother’s death. There were several aunts and uncles, but she did not know them well.

In 1942, while stripping varnish from a floor in preparation for my mother’s sister May’s wedding, my great-grandmother was burned and died three days later from her wounds. The oldest, May was married and on her own. Doris, fifteen, went to live with a paternal aunt Imelda Gregoire Willett in Somersworth, NH. Jeannette (my mother) and her sister Pauline at the ages of fourteen and thirteen were placed in a foster home in Berlin. Richard, twelve, and Robert, nine, lived with their paternal uncle Lionel Gregoire for a time; and Agnes, ten, was placed in a foster home in Berlin, NH. These continuing tragedies and the subsequent separation of these siblings from each other left them with few pleasant childhood memories and a fragmented association with their extended families. My mother’s reluctance to relive a painful part of her life is understandable and one that I feel I must respect. This disconnection deepens my curiosity to learn about this side of the family if only through the discovery of maiden names and the dates of births, marriages, and deaths.

I gave the clerk in the Probate Office in the Coos County Courthouse the names of Franise and Harry Hachey or Hachez and asked her to look for their will. My mother thought that they had died in Berlin, NH and knew that they had died before her mother in 1938. The clerk wanted dates of death but was very cooperative when I explained I did not have that information. She provided three documents on people with the name Hachey. The names did not match any that I had, but I took down the information in case they were relatives that I could use to trace my great-grandparents. The clerk explained that many people died without wills and that they would not be listed in her office unless they had a will at death.

I moved next door to the office of the Register of Deeds. The clerk in this office showed me two sets of books that listed real estate transactions for Coos County from 1860 to the present. One set of books listed the people who had bought property in the county while the other listed those who had sold property. The binder of each book was labeled with the years. Some spanned five years while others contained only two years of records. One set of books listed the sellers of property in alphabetical order while the other listed the buyers. Once you had found the name of the individual you were looking for, you could find the volume number of the book that held the actual document of the transaction. Large, dusty leather covered volumes were stacked vertically on individual shelves. They numbered well over one hundred and took up a large portion of this room.

I spent the next four hours combing the directories and leather bound volumes for relatives I had never known. I came across many transactions involving the Gregoire side of my family but none that fit the names of the Hachey side of my family. Since there were only a few transactions with the Hachey name, I decided to record them and see if my mother recognized any of the names. I left the courthouse with no information on my Hachey great-grandparents, but it had been very exciting to search among these old documents and find some information about people I was related to. It gave them an identity. They had existed and here was the proof still available for any one who wanted it years after their demise.

As I read to my mother the Hachey names I had found to my mother, she stopped me on one of them. The directory had listed the purchasers of a piece of property as Fine & Frannese Hachey. I had not paid any attention to it because my great-grandfather’s name was Harry and that name was not listed. My mother pointed out that Frannese was Franice in French and it could have been her grandmother. I returned to the courthouse on Monday and looked up the original documents for these names. I found that Fine was the name on all the documents, but at the bottom, they also listed the name as Fianese or Fiennese. Fine was a woman and her husband’s name was Harry. I started with documents from 1914 and worked my way back to 1903 using documents referred to in the content of the previous record. In the last three documents, Fine’s maiden name is given as Thibot and Thibeault. Was this my great-grandmother’s maiden name? I can’t tell you how excited I was to discover something about her. I was curious about the fact that all the land transactions were in her name. I thought that this was very unusual. In the last several documents, the fact that Harry Hachey cannot read or write is recorded and an X is used to replace his name on the signature line of the deed. I presume that the transactions were recorded in my great-grandmother’s name because she could sign the documents and read and write. Though the information I received was only a minute piece of the puzzle, I felt compelled to continue my search.

My next step was to visit the town office in Berlin, NH. I was hoping that I could search through their records and discover birth, death, and marriage records that would give me more information on my Hachey great-grandparents. The clerk was very sympathetic to my search, but they did not allow people to go through their records. There was not enough room to spread out the records or accommodate researchers. There was also a concern for why people wanted to access these records and for what purpose. She explained that many frauds had taken place when there were no restrictions upon who could access the records. The State of New Hampshire restricted access to information on marriage, divorce, and death records from 1938 to the present and birth records from 1901 to the present. Since this town office did not allow independent searches, they would look for records but only for a fee of $10, and they would need dates and accurate names. Since I did not have accurate names or any dates and did not want to waste $10, I chose not to request a search. Besides, I liked searching. It was much more satisfying to discover information on your own than to have it given to you. The clerk gave me the address of the Vital Statistics Office in Concord, NH. She told me that I could access the records for any part of NH before 1938 and 1901 at this office and I could do it myself.

I left for Concord, NH, the state capital, on Friday July 24, 1998 at 7 am. It was a two hour ride. The Office of Vital Statistics was in the Health and Human Services Building. I checked in with the receptionist in the front lobby. She gave me a name tag and directions to Vital Statistics housed in the basement of the building. I was greeted downstairs by another receptionist who had been informed of my presence in the building. She gave me directions to the vault and told me that a volunteer would help me.

I was given instructions on how to obtain information from the vital statistics files that were stacked on shelves throughout this large room. For each request, I needed to fill out a form stating the name of the person I was looking for and whether the marriage, divorce, birth, or death occurred before 1900 or after. My signature was written at the bottom in order for the office to keep track of those requesting information. When the volunteers received the request, they retrieved the cards that pertained to the name and I was free to search through them. Photocopies were available for $.50 each. I was able to find my grandfather Gregoire’s birth certificate, my great-grandfather Hachey’s death certificate, my maternal grandparent’s marriage license, and the death certificate of a maternal aunt, Lena, who died at the age of ten months.

Again, I was confronted with conflicting information. On my great-grandfather’s death certificate he was listed as Harry Hachey. This name was listed a second time on the death certificate of the infant child, Lena, but on the marriage certificate for my grandparents, he was listed as Hazen Hachey. Because I had no dates on the death of Harry/Hazen Hachey, I could not be sure that this was definitely my great-grandfather. On the death certificate for the infant child, Lena, my great-grandmother was listed as F. Thibeau Hachey. On my grandparents’ marriage license as Feinnease Thibeault. Again, I had conflicting spellings and differing names but there were several new pieces of information that I had obtained from the death certificates.

On the child’s death certificate, the birthplace of the father was listed as New Brunswick, and on Harry Hachey’s death certificate, his parents names were listed as Honore Hachey and Henriette Godin from New Brunswick. If this was indeed my great-grandfather’s death certificate, then I had a little more information to go on. Both death certificates also listed the place of internment as St. Annes’ Cemetery in Berlin, NH. I could perhaps look for the grave stone and obtain some information from it. I was disappointed that my great-grandmother’s death certificate was not among the records. I can only assume that she did not die in NH. Since my search was for Canadian citizens, the volunteers strongly urged me to go to the American/Canadian Genealogical Society in Manchester, NH, about 20 minutes away. They also suggested that I go to the state library and look through the annual town reports for Berlin, NH that might list the births and deaths that occurred each year. They felt it was very likely that I would find some dates that might help me. I decided to skip the state library for the time being and proceed to the American/Canadian Genealogical Society.

Located in a yellow brick building that was at one time a parochial school, at 4 Elm Street in Manchester, was the American/Canadian Genealogical Society (ACGS). Its hours were Wednesday and Friday from 10 am to 9 pm and Saturday 9 am to 4 pm. Again, this facility was staffed by volunteers. If you were a member of the Society, the use of materials was free after you have paid the $25 membership fee. If you were not a member, you paid a $5 fee for using the facilities for the day. I paid my $5 and was introduced to a gentleman who showed me around. He was in the process of doing research but stopped to help me. There was a main index housed on shelves in the middle of the room. These books were organized in alphabetical order by last name. Most of the information available at the ACGS are from the records of Catholic parishes in the United States and Canada. The Catholic Church was very diligent in recording the sacraments of baptism, death, and marriage.

We started with the parish records of St. Anne’s in Berlin, NH where my grandparents were married. Here my great-grandparents were listed a Nazaire Hachez and Thianise Thibeault Hachez. Again, conflicting information. This was beginning to frustrate me, I wasn’t getting any information that agreed on the spelling of my great-grandparents first names or even their surnames. The only thing that convinced me that these were the people I was seeking was the names of my grandfather Gregoire and his parents that coincided with the information I had for this side of the family. Without their names on these documents, I was only guessing that these were the Hacheys I was searching for.

The gentleman who was helping me suggested that we start with one side of the family and we decided to search for the Gregoires. We went back to the main index in the library and found the names of my Gregoire great-grandparents. Because the Gregoires resided only in Quebec, we were able to gather information about each person who had married, their parents’ names, and the parishes they married in and came from. This way we were able to move from one parish to the next. My assistant showed me how to record this information on a chart noting the person, their parent, the place they were baptized, and the date of the baptism. He also made sure that the source I had taken this information from was recorded so that I could quickly find it again if I needed to.

Within an hour, we had traced my ancestors to St. Anne’s Parish in France, in the town of Montpelier, in the province of Languedoc. Theophile and Madeleine (Clemence) Gregoire’s son Francois had immigrated to Canada from France and married Marie Ann Lienard on October 30, 1701 at the parish of St. Foye in Quebec. Francois came to Canada as a member of the military and his occupation was a master surgeon, the same occupation as his father. Marie Ann Lienard’s mother and father were Franoise Pelletier and Sebatien Lienard.

My assistant told me that Pelletier was derived from the word pelt and was probably given to a person with the occupation of a fur trader. He said that it was probably a “dit” name. Dit names were very common among the emigrating French. The best explanation I have for a dit name is the one I discovered on the Internet. “A ‘dit name’ is an alias given to a family name. Compared to other alias or a.k.a. that are given to one specific person, the dit names will be given to many persons. It seems the usage exists almost only in France, New France, and in Scotland where we find clans or septs” (Genealogy of Quebec Website). Some of the names derive from occupations or military service. He showed me where Franoise Pelletier’s brother Nicholas married a Native American on August 5, 1715 by the name of Marie. She was listed as a Sauvagesse, the french word for Savage, a name used when referring to Native Americans, and as the daughter of Grand Chief Jean-Baptiste Nanabesa. This was proof of the conversion of Native Americans to Catholicism and the intermarriage between the French and the Native Americans peoples.

I was very excited and wanted to continue on with my search of another branch of my family tree. I didn’t want to take advantage of the volunteer who had been more than generous with his time, so I thanked him and proceeded to search for the Hachey side of the family. I floundered around for a while trying to find the first piece of information that would lead me to the next. My assistant had told me that New Brunswick was much harder to track than Quebec. After about 30 minutes, the volunteer who helped me began visiting with another volunteer and related that I was searching for the surname Hachey. This volunteer immediately recognized the Hachey name. He pulled out a book and began to search for the name Nazaire. Within a few minutes, he had located the name and it was only a matter of moving from one father’s name to the next in order to put together my ancestry which, again, began in France. The name Hachey was originally Hache/Gallant. There were conflicting views about how these two names came together. One explanation was that Hache was a “dit” name. Michel Hache-Gallant was the first ancestor to combine these names. It seems that all Hache/Gallants were descended from Michel and his wife, Anne Cormier. They were married in 1688 according to one source and 1690 according to another. Records in Quebec list Michel Hache’s baptism on April 24, 1668 when he was eight years old. He is thought to be the son of Pierre Larche and a Micmac Indian. Some documents list his mother as an Eskimo but that was challenged because there were no Eskimos in this region of Canada. If he was the son of Pierre Larche, which most believe he was, then somewhere his name or the spelling of it changed. It is known that he was orphaned and raised by a Lord Michel LeNeuf de la Valliere as his servant. Michel Hache seemed to have been given a substantial education by his master, and he was remembered as a well-educated man. Another speculation on how the name Gallant became attached to the Hache name was given in John Gallant’s (1998) summary of Michel Hache’s life,

It was later reported that Michel Hache was in a certain fight, and having fought like a lion, afterwards was given the surname of ‘Galant’. Whether this account is accurate is open to question, since the name ‘Galland’ was known in France in the 1600s, while the names Hache and Larche were not. (p. 4)

Whatever the reason for the Hache/Gallant name, it seemed to be that most of those in North America with the Hache or Gallant surname were descended from Michel Hache and Anne Cormier. John Gallant’s paper (1998), Life And Times of Michel Hache-Gallant, is provided in the appendix if you are interested in reading the full account of his life.

As I write about my research, I must emphasize that there are many stones left unturned in discovering all that I would like to know about my family. I was very lucky to have been able to research two lines of my family so easily. The other lines will probably take me more time and will continue long after this final product is completed. The names, dates, and stories that I have come across during my research have given me a sense of awe. I was descended from people who were among the first Europeans on the North American Continent. If Michel Hache was the son of a Micmac Indian, then I may have descended from those who lived on this continent before the Europeans. The fact that I am able to retrace my ancestry so easily is also inspiring. The fact that my descendents were Catholic was actually a great benefit in the documentation of their lives.

In leaving the research process reported in this chapter, I want my reader to understand that I am not fully finished. I have many more lines to trace, and I am hopeful that they will include more stories like Michel Hache’s, but I have yet another story to tell, a tale that takes place in the 20th century and is directly related to my upbringing. It is different from the stories pertaining to my research, because it includes a human element associated with the oral interviews I have conducted.

Contact: mary_gd@yahoo.com
Copyright 2007 Mary Snowman
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Posted 5/29/2007